Panel stalls on bullbar guidelines

The group had its inaugural meeting last month, with its first job to create a set of tolerances for bullbars featuring what will and won’t be acceptable on NSW roads.

The groups – the NSW-ACT 4WD Association, the Bullbar Council of Australia and NSW Farmers – objected to the draft in its current form as it introduced specific design standards not part of the current standards, said 4WD Association president Craig Thomas.

The first part of Roads Minister Duncan Gay’s plan – to review the current standards – could be completed as early as this week.

The second part of the minister’s direction – crash testing bullbars to ensure compliance – will be done within the next two years.

“The development of the previous bullbar standard took six years and the result was not terribly useful so we’re hoping not to repeat that,” Mr Thomas said.

The group’s job has been reviewing the standards, but there’s still some ambiguity.

“There’s a few bits of them that are fairly clear – no sharp edges and the driver needs to see the road, but the whole problem came from very woolly statements,” Mr Thomas said.

“Because of (that), we’ve got all these groups trying to enforce rules that aren’t there.

“What’s causing discussion is that each group is trying to add the conditions they would have liked in the original standards to the temporary document, rather than just reviewing the current rules.”

There are also issues with current Australian design rules focused on pedestrian safety.

Bullbars should follow the general shape of the vehicle so pedestrians go over, rather than under the car, in an accident.

“The problem is theory doesn’t work on four-wheel-drives and or any vehicle where the impact point of the pedestrian is more than 70 centimetres from the ground,” he said.

“The pedestrian no longer rotates on to the vehicle, because off-road bullbars are designed to push animals away from the vehicle and the road.

“While that doesn’t align with current thinking of pedestrian safety there’s nothing in the standards documents that says that’s not legal.”

Group members have demonstrated new research objecting members haven’t had the chance to question, Mr Thomas said.

“Who gets to decide whether they’re legal or not when engineers have already decided?” he said.

“They’re trying to put more restrictions on bullbars.

“It bothers us that something that was legal yesterday won’t be legal tomorrow.

“These bars were made and sold in good faith.

“These groups are trying to retrospectively introduce laws on things that didn’t exist when the current rules were made.”

Mr Gay said clear guidelines would be provided on the process for follow-up inspections and dealing with defects notices that had already been handed to drivers.

“Within the month, we will have these guidelines in place so owners and manufacturers know what bullbars will be allowed on NSW roads in the next two years,” he said.

“This was never going to be an easy problem to solve and was never going to be solved overnight.

“That’s why we decided to issue a two-year moratorium – to give relief to people in the bush while we work through these complex issues.”

The minister’s office stopped short of promising refunds to drivers who had paid fines issued for non-complying bullbars, saying that was the responsibility of the finance department.

A spokesman for Finance Minister Dominic Perrottet said no direction had been made to start refunding motorists.

“We are working through this issue with Mr Gay,” he said.